Social Media Traffic: Using Facebook to Gain Visitors

Most people have come to realise the impact that social media is having on our personal and professional lives. If you are serious about your business – and your content – then you need to allocate some of your time and skills to driving as much social media traffic to your content as possible. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of social media.

It is a well-known fact among internet marketers that the success of any website comes down to good content. While adding fresh, regular content is crucial to the success of any digital business; online marketing is about a lot more than content! In order to get the most out of each piece of content, you need to market it as effectively as possible to ensure that your content reaches its full traffic potential. The simplest and most valuable tool for achieving this is through social media traffic.

Here is a list of I have compiled of my top tips and strategies for marketing your content on social media and Facebook’

Share Your Content on Facebook More Than Once

This one can be controversial, but it’s a necessary evil for internet marketers, and those who have had online success will tell you that it may be seen as a nuisance, but the proof is in the pudding.

The concept of ‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat’ applies as much to social media traffic as it does in the shower – sharing your content multiple times is proven to improve traffic, and while it might seem a bit simple, just humour me.

This might sound obvious, but the more times you share your content, the more times it will get clicked.  Data shows that re-tweets and re-posts are clicked at a rate of around 50-75% of the original share, making multiple content sharing, well worth doing.

Most of us are already pretty good at doing this, but we are not so good at repeating this step. Sharing your content only once on any social media platform is a rookie mistake.

Photo Credit: source

Know When Enough’s Enough

There can be scenario’s where sharing becomes ‘too much of a good thing’.

While sharing content multiple times produces the desired results, it can also come across as ‘spammy’ (for lack of a better word). While I highly recommend utilizing Facebook to share your posts regularly and more than once for each piece of content, there is a fine line between good business and overload.

If you do go forth and post your content excessively, you may lose people as they will start scrolling past your posts without reading them, and may even ‘unlike’ your page so that they stop receiving your posts in their news feed.

Here are a few ways that you can ensure you are sharing sensibly;

• Think about your followers – will they appreciate the post? Are you keeping them informed and reminding them to check out your content or just clogging their feed with repeat material? Think about where you would draw your own spam line and then ensure you don’t cross it!
• Make sure the content you are sharing is valuable to your audience. The only thing worse than a ‘spammy’ post is one that shares worthless content of no value. Be sure that what you are sharing is something worthy of your loyal audience – because that’s what they deserve!
• Think about the following things before posting; How often is acceptable for this content to be shared? What time of day might be the optimal exposure time? How long will this content be fresh and relevant? How will I create variety with my sharing?

Share Your Message in a Unique Way

While it’s important to utilize the social media traffic that multiple sharing will bring in, you must not simply replicate posts and push share, as this can also be deemed ‘spammy’ (there’s that word again).

Every time you share old content, it needs to be done in a fresh way. This is important and can make the difference between gaining traffic and losing it.

When making a post on Facebook, most of us will include a title for the post, the link to the content and perhaps a hashtag or two. That’s a great start. However, when you share this content for the second and subsequent times, you need to change these up. You can add variety by changing the headlines or using the sub-headings instead, sharing a fact or statistic from your content, by asking questions, or including interesting quotes from the content that will pull people in.

Another fantastic way to mix things up is by using screen shots of bullet point lists or block quotes from the article as the feature image – instead of the primary image for the blog which was used in your first round of sharing. Think about how you can put a fresh spin on your content before you post it, and take note of things that do and don’t work. For example, take note of whether asking a question increases your audience engagement.

Taking the time to repurpose your content before posting will give your Facebook post the illusion of freshness that it needs to garner optimum traffic.

Tailor Your Content To Suit Each Network

The best way to make sure that your content reaches the largest potential audience is to custom-fit your post to each social media network, working off the strengths of each.

For example, Facebook link posts that utilise Facebook’s built in ‘link format’ tend to do better than any other Facebook posts. Link posts are also fantastic because Facebook’s technology pulls meta information from the webpage being linked and even includes the page’s title, description and feature image in the post without you having to lift a finger. Simply paste your link into the post box and let the magic happen.

This might all sound simple but it’s worth thinking about – taking the extra time to make sure you are taking advantage of what social media has to offer could equate to higher traffic, and ultimately more money in your pocket.

Are You Ready to Cash in on Your Social Media Traffic?

I hope these tips have given you a good idea of what you need to successfully use social media to increase traffic to your website. Studies and statistics have proven multiple sharing to produce bigger traffic results and often viral outcomes so it’s well worth spending a little time familiarizing yourself with the basics of utilizing social media.

Just be careful that you do not cross over to the dark side and start to be perceived as a spammer. Multiple sharing is an excellent tool to use, but proceed with caution, and remember – post responsibly!